In their stated quest to help athletes, the men behind the Fultondale company known as S.W.A.T.S. (Sports with Alternatives to Steroids) may have put some of those athletes and their schools at risk.

If they've given or sold their products to football players at Alabama, Auburn, LSU and other SEC schools, as they claim, Ross and Key may have jeopardized the eligibility of some of those players. They may have participated in NCAA violations. They certainly provided players opportunities to disregard the warnings of their coaches and schools about dealing with the controversial supplement company.

The players aren’t blameless themselves. Despite two cease-and-desist letters in the last three years from Alabama to S.W.A.T.S., Ross and Key said some players didn’t cease or desist from dealing with the company.

As Ross said, “When the players call me, they are disregarding (the school’s warning), too.”

and on SI.com about the company and in subsequent interviews about their dealings with the Alabama football program. It would be no surprise if the NCAA enforcement staff took the matter under consideration.

In reverse chronological order:

Christopher Key of S.W.A.T.S. said he sold the company's products to Alabama football players leading up to the 2012 BCS Championship Game. (AP photo/Butch Dill)

In the two days before Alabama beat LSU 21-0 for the BCS National Championship on Jan. 9, 2012, Key said he welcomed “well over” 20 Alabama football players to a hotel room in New Orleans. This despite the Alabama compliance director sending Ross a cease-and-desist letter dated March 30, 2009, asking the company to do three things:

Refrain from using current student-athletes to endorse products. Refrain from contacting current student-athletes. Refrain from giving or selling products to current student-athletes.

“Do they own these athletes?” Key said of the university. “I thought we lived in America. … These athletes want product.”

Key said he secretly taped a video of that January, 2012, get-together in New Orleans with a pen camera - a video he showed to Sports Illustrated - without the knowledge of the players. SI.com identified three of the players in the video as Alex Watkins, Adrian Hubbard and Quinton Dial.

Why the secret recording?

Ross said that, in 2008, he’d provided the company’s “Athletic Performance Chips” - which the company describes as “multi-layered holographic images” that can “increase your strength, stamina, endurance and recovery;” the chips often are embedded in wristbands - to four Alabama players.

Ross said he gave those players the products for free at that time in exchange for a promise that, after the season, the players would endorse the products. He said the players never made good on that promise.

“Following that,” Key said, “every athlete we do anything with, we record it, to have that as evidence of what we were talking about. … It was to protect us.”

At the January, 2012, meeting in his New Orleans hotel room, Key said, “all 20” of the Alabama players who visited him bought products from him. He said they all bought the “Athletic Performance Chips.” He said some of the players also bought “SWATS Ultimate Spray,” which the company says contains IGF-1, which is on the banned substance list of the NCAA, the NFL and other sports governing bodies.

Mitch Ross of S.W.A.T.S. holds up a copy of the Sports Illustrated article about the company in the Feb. 4, 2013, issue. (AP photo/Butch Dill)

Ross and Key argue otherwise, but did selling that product to the players make it possible that, by using it, they could’ve failed a drug test?

“We have a set price that we provide all the athletes so that we stay under NCAA regulations,” Key said. “We have to keep that confidential.”

The Sports Illustrated story said Key gave the players some products for free and told them, “It should never come up, but I’ll go to the grave saying you bought this.”

It would be an NCAA violation if the players got the products for free or at a discount not available to the general student population because of their status as football players. Under “Prohibited Forms of Pay,” the NCAA Division I manual includes “Preferential Treatment, Benefits or Services” under Bylaw 12.1.2.1.6 and defines it this way: “Preferential treatment, benefits or services because of the individual’s athletics reputation or skill or pay-back potential as a professional athlete.”

Selling their products or giving them away isn’t the only subject on which Key and Ross have contradicted themselves.

Key said he met with “quite a few” LSU defensive players at a Birmingham hotel before the Tigers played Alabama during the 2011 regular season.

“Gave them all the (company’s) technology - I’m sorry, they purchased all the technology,” Key said.

LSU beat Alabama 9-6 in that game. Sometime after that game, Key said, “Alabama players contacted us” to inquire about using the company’s products. But Ross said, after that game, “Chris hit up a couple Alabama players on Facebook and showed them what we did with LSU.”

Key’s Facebook page includes photos of him with various players. One shows Key with Alabama’s Courtney Upshaw and Hubbard and includes this comment from Key: “Roll Tide. Me and defensive MVP Courtney Upshaw and Adrian Hubbard, the next MVP.” The comment is dated Jan. 10, 2012 at 1:09 p.m., the day after Upshaw was named the defensive MVP of Alabama’s 21-0 win over LSU in the BCS Championship Game.

There seem to be more than enough reasons out there for the NCAA to try to speak to Ross and Key and the players they say they did business with.

There are plenty of reasons, too, for Alabama coaches and compliance officials to speak with the players who seem to have ignored their warnings about dealing with S.W.A.T.S.

“UA has been aware of this situation for some time, and we have monitored this company for several years," university spokesperson Deborah Lane

. "They have twice ignored cease-and-desist letters sent by our compliance office. We have maintained consistent education of our student-athletes regarding the substances in question and will continue to do so.”

If Key is telling the truth about his interaction with Alabama players during the 2011 season, as the secret video he recorded and showed to Sports Illustrated would seem to indicate, that education has been less than effective.

To the list of notorious NCAA characters that includes rogue boosters and street agents, do we have to add rogue entrepreneurs?

In the last three years alone, Ross and Key said, they’ve received and ignored cease-and-desist letters from both Alabama and Auburn. Key said some Tigers purchased the company’s performance chips before the start of the 2010 season, which ended with Auburn winning the BCS title. The school’s cease-and-desist letter to S.W.A.T.S. is dated Oct. 6, 2011.

It would seem counterproductive for an Alabama-based company to go against the wishes of the state’s two largest football programs. Suggest that to Key, and how does he respond?